Ferrari Humanities Symposia : Programs : Humanities Center : University of Rochester

Ferrari Humanities Symposia

Professor Jane Tylus

Jane Tylus received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center and her B.A. at the College of William and Mary. Her scholarship focuses on late medieval and early modern European literature, particularly Italian. She has special interests in the history of religion, translation studies, and women’s writing. In 2015 she published Siena: City of Secrets, a history and guide to the most telling and intimate features of the medieval and modern city. Other recent books include a complete translation of the poetry of Gaspara Stampa (co-edited with Troy Tower; Chicago, 2011), The Poetics of Masculinity in Early modern Italy and Spain (co-edited with Gerry Mulligan; Toronto 2011), and Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literature, Literacy, and the Signs of Others (Chicago, 2010, winner of the MLA’s 2011 Howard Marraro Prize for Outstanding Work in Italian Studies). She is also the author of Writing and Vulnerability in the Late Renaissance (Stanford, 1996), co-editor of Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World (California, 1999, with Margaret Beissinger and Susanne Wofford), co-editor of the Longman Anthology of World Literature (early modern volume), and translator and editor of Sacred Narratives of Lucrezia Tornabuoni (Chicago, 2002; winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Translation Award). She has published over thirty-five articles and essays in journals such as Rinascimento, Renaissance Quarterly, Theatre Journal, English Literary History, Renaissance Drama, and Italia. She has recently taken on the general editorship of I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, with the first issue under her direction appearing in November, 2013.

Tylus has taught at NYU since 2003, where she was Vice Provost for Academic Affairs from 2005-11. She is the founding Director of the NYU Center for the Humanities. Prior to her appointment at NYU, she taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French at the University of Wisconsin, where she also served as Associate Dean of Humanities. She taught at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in spring, 2012, and was a visiting professor at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in Florence in spring, 2015; she has been visiting professor at Yale University in 2015-2016. She has held fellowships at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and spent a semester as a fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for the Humanities.

Jane Tylus’s current work includes a study of the language of Renaissance pilgrimage, and a co-edited volume on early modern translation. She continues to write on Gaspara Stampa and Lucrezia Tornabuoni, and is contemplating for her next translation the work of the 20th-century writer Federigo Tozzi. She is also interested in the literature and history of Sicily, which she has taught on several occasions to NYU undergraduates.Tylus has been a disciplinary representative for the Modern Language Association and the Renaissance Society of America. In the department of Italian Studies she has been active establishing an M.A. program at NYU’s Villa La Pietra in Florence.